The Egg-Shaped Thing

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  “Did you dial it direct? — I mean, is it S.T.D. from where you are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tesh, hadn’t you better tell me where you’re speaking from?”

  “I can’t tell you my whereabouts and I have my reasons. Let’s just say it’s a ‘government computer centre’. Okay?”

  “Yes, I get the sort of thing. Go on.”

  “Everything was quite normal till that ringing tone began. In other words, when the circuit was connected. Then!” He managed to force his voice down a few decibels, but it sounded far from natural — “In the corner of my room there’s a television set. It was switched off, of course. As a matter of fact it wasn’t even connected. Still isn’t. But the whole face of the tube was glowing brightly — synchronized with the phone rings!”

  I saw at once the similarity between this and the wristwatch episode and my voice wasn’t quite steady: “Acting as a fluorescope! — you’ve got gamma rays floating around somewhere!”

  “Exactly! But where? It’s an odd thing, James, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with this, but our work here involves the analysis of something…something weird…that has been happening to some of the fuel rods taken from the reactors at Calder Hall…the power station there — ”

  “Up at Windscale?”

  “That’s right. We have some samples here.”

  “Then is your radiation coming from those fuel rods?”

  “No. Naturally they’re heavily shielded and anyway this is more general. It doesn’t seem to have any source. I checked everything with a geiger counter. The level was not dangerous but the count was appreciably higher than normal background.”

  “Did it persist after the phone call?”

  Tesh paused, as if lighting a cigarette. It seemed to calm him. “What happened was that the TV screen glowed in time with the phone rings. The ringing went on for quite a long time and I made my first quick check with the geiger counter then. When Daphne answered, the radiation settled down to a steady level — that’s when I tried to locate the source. And when I hung up the radiation stopped.”

  That fitted my case exactly!

  I asked: “What did Daphne say to you?”

  “James, it was absolute garble. She’s scared out of her wits and they’re all up there — your Dr Gray included…Look, we’re going up there! Right away! My department has a Ministry aircraft permanently on standby at London Airport and I should be able to get the use of that…say by 0530. And James…”

  “Yes?”

  “I want Dr Flaske along. I know you saw him last night.”

  “Bright boy!” I said. “But it isn’t a bit of good our going up to Moorbridge in the blind. We’ve got to work out what is actually happening and then decide what to do.”

  “We can talk that over on the aircraft.”

  I protested: “You don’t even know whether they’ll still be there when we arrive.”

  “They must have gone there for a reason, James.”

  “But what happens when they find out that bombarding that egg-shaped thing with subatomic particles is futile?”

  “What makes you so sure it will be?”

  “Because E equals MC squared.”

  “In English.”

  “The egg can’t possibly be the source of the power. It is only the source of control. We’re concerned with the consequences of a gigantic equation. It has to be balanced.”

  Tesh said: “And what if we can’t balance it?”

  I paused before answering. This question posed a major communications problem. Tesh had been taught to think in terms of black and white. He even judged human beings this way. In Tesh’s world of Bomber Command you searched for an enemy and when you had succeeded in this you destroyed that enemy.

  Tesh had grasped certain aspects of the situation probably more quickly and adeptly than I had. For instance, he had, using only the knowledge he had acquired as a by-product of security work, absorbed the very difficult concept of statistical interference arising from the weird unknown of a Relativity concept that didn’t fit in with known science.

  But there were gaps in his knowledge and understanding and this was giving rise to a gap between us. I did not now see Davvitt as an enemy. I saw him as one side of the quantum coin…the part — to put it in the old-fashioned way — that came down on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays. Tesh comprised the remainder and I was a kind of ‘Sunday’ — trying to resolve the differentials of the entire week.

  Yet, how to communicate my ‘Sunday’ thoughts? I couldn’t express the total picture to either side, because each group only saw one side of the metaphorical coin. For all I knew, it might be vital, as a part of the equation, to respect Davvitt’s seemingly protective instinct over the egg, for what it might signify in terms of the human element of the equation. And not only human. For though what was happening now seemed a far cry from three squealing cats on someone’s roof, nevertheless those cats and Nicola’s puppy and perhaps other components too were factors in a situation we didn’t begin to understand and therefore were also factors that must not be ignored until we knew what was relevant and what was not. My spine pulsed unpleasantly as I concerned myself with the thought that Nicola, too, had been very close to that egg-shaped thing upon the occasion when Bandy had —

  — had what?

  Tesh: “James? Are you still there?”

  “Sorry. I’m trying to think things out. There is one thing arising from this artificial re-organization of Time/Space within the egg which one might expect — that is, a condition where alternately nothing is happening at all, and everything is happening at once. In other words, pulses. Are you with me so far?”

  Tesh said: “Yes. As a matter of fact there is reason to believe that such a cycle of events has been happening. But the pulses aren’t always the same size, and they occur at different intervals — months sometimes.”

  “That follows, because there are various different energy levels and the jumps between them would vary enormously when magnified to such a stupendous degree.”

  “But so far you are talking about what goes on inside the egg.”

  I said: “The vital thing to grasp is that you can’t disturb Time/Space in just one spot without affecting every part of the Universe, to however infinitesimal a degree. Until we know what that means in terms of fact we can do nothing. It isn’t safe, because everything we do will influence one side of the equation, without the other. I don’t think we should even go up to Moorbridge until we know what we’re doing.”

  “James…I’m sorry, but you must regard yourself as under my orders. If necessary I can have you effectively subpoenaed by my Ministry to ensure that you carry them out. And my orders are that we rendezvous at London Airport at 0515 hours in preparation for take-off at 0530. I also order that you contact Dr Flaske by telephone now and ask him to fly up with us.”

  *

  Flaske resolutely proved himself a genuine eccentric when he failed to be annoyed at being telephoned at the ungodly hour of four a.m.

  He seemed highly sceptical when I told him what Tesh and I had in mind. “Aeroplanes on standby?” he mocked. “Fulbright! Why go chasing the speed of light in an old hunk of tin?”

  I asked firmly: “Can you be at London Airport at five-fifteen?”

  “I told you I’m not one of those go-getting physicists who merely travel. Better by far to be in two places at once in the normal way.”

  I felt irritated with his lampooning despite the way I felt. “We need to talk to you. At least we could achieve that if you came along for the trip.”

  Flaske couldn’t refrain from a very polite little giggle. “Don’t worry — I’m still not too old to chase wild geese.”

  Wild geese! — or swans?

  As I went quietly back into the bedroom I felt that an eccentrically pivoted roulette-wheel had turned quite a few revolutions. Nicola woke up and I wondered just how I could explain the events of the night in answer to her sleepy, “What’s t
he matter, darling?”

  I’m afraid I didn’t try to tell her, just at that moment. Sometimes, to make love is to pray.

  Chapter Nine

  “You’d better get up, James.”

  Nicola signalled a great deal in the look that went with this piece of advice. She knew that the terror stakes had suddenly risen to Grand National proportions; accepted without discussion that at all costs the one essential was to maintain absolute normalcy. Panic is contagious; honesty may exist in a look, but must be countermanded by the therapy of routinemanship.

  Therefore Games, most assuredly, must be played to this end. I know people who despise such stiff-upper-lipisms; I’m not sure they understand what they’re for.

  I said: “I’ve got five more minutes in bed. The car’s ready; Flaske has been briefed; and I can make the airport in twenty minutes. That still leaves me fifteen minutes in hand. Is my arithmetic up to standard?”

  “Yes. So is mine. You’re going to change your mind and let me come — at least as far as the airport.”

  “Don’t you like your primroses?”

  “I love my primroses; but you’re not going to be allowed to get in the habit of thinking of me as purely decorative.”

  “You’ve got to be at Fortnum’s on time.”

  “It’s a half day. I can last till lunchtime.”

  She cheated by kissing me, so of course I gave way.

  “Will you drive straight back here?” I asked her.

  “I’m going to change at daddy’s flat. It seems to have escaped your notice that I don’t have any fresh clothes to put on. Fortnum’s is a bad place to start a scandal — it doesn’t go with the crystallized fruit.”

  “Won’t your father be rather curious?”

  My question came out innocently — I was hardly in a mood to set traps. But her unguarded reply — it came quickly, without predetermination — left both of us alert to the brittle uncertainty of the high wire.

  She said: “He won’t be there” — and darted me an anxious look.

  I let it pass. “He could still come back at the wrong moment — in which case he would be even more curious if he found a car identical with his, even down to the number plates!”

  “You’re underestimating me, James Fulbright! And the phone’s ringing — your mystery one, I think. So now you’ll have to get up!”

  On the green phone for some reason it wasn’t always possible to visualize the subscriber at the other end. I don’t like secretive gadgets equipped with voice-scramblers and I think this had the effect of souring me toward the owner of the voice so scrambled. It never sounds quite right anyway, having been put together again by the electronic antidote within the box of tricks underneath. And later it turned out I was very wrong in the impression I gathered of the man who cautiously halloed me this time.

  This particular individual seemed riddled with suspicion — an American with one of those low-frequency voices they seem to cultivate so as to imply that everything is under control — their control. The vibrations of the vocal cords, in these imposed conditions, are so low in pitch that they only carry along telephone lines as a sort of intermittent rattle — but none the less impressive for all that.

  “You Fulbright?” it asked, quite convinced that I was nothing of the kind. The distortions of the descrambler made it sound permanently surprised.

  “Yes. Speaking.”

  “James Fulbright?” it persisted, more incredulously still. I reassured it that I was. “We, ar, had a call from Mr Philbar concerning the contents of, ar, a certain file. Are you aware of this enquiry?”

  I said I was.

  “The question places us in a difficult position. There are several factors to consider before we can release any information on technical matters of this kind. In view of this, we wondered whether it might be possible for you to look in at the Embassy at eleven o’clock this morning? The address is…”

  I was solemnly told that the United States Embassy was in Grosvenor Square. I interrupted the traffic directions, though, to point out that I had to fly north in a few minutes.

  “That does create, ar, a little difficulty,” said the voice. It went on to ask if there was any particular urgency.

  I said I would have thought that if he was prepared to phone me on a Secrephone at four-thirty a.m. it might imply that the whole thing could possibly be a little hectic.

  He was ungoadable, but ground on with: “Maybe it would be possible for someone — maybe myself — to meet you at the airport before you take off?”

  That was more like it. I replied that he could do no better. He said ‘ar’ twice, and asked me to hold on. I was still holding on when Nicola appeared with some coffee. I told her I’d better dress where I was, could she bring my clothes in?

  Nicola said: “See? Not so much time after all!”

  “Don’t be maddening. I’m being grilled already.”

  “Well, grill him back.”

  I’d got my shirt on by the time the voice came back on the line. It immensely impressed me by saying it had checked with Washington and it was okay for me to be briefed before take-off. I felt close to being a V.I.P. in that particular reflected glory. By his tone I conjectured I might well have got the President out of bed.

  The phone call had made us late, and I drove like hell through quiet streets to get to the Motorway.

  *

  At the entrance to the airport access tunnel there was a police car waiting. One of the officers flashed a red lamp at us and I stopped the car.

  “Morning, sir; morning, miss. Mr Fulbright?”

  “Yes?”

  “If you’ll follow me I’ll take you right round. The aircraft is waiting on the apron and you’re to join it there.”

  I said: “Fine. There’s someone supposed to be meeting me from the U.S. Embassy, though.”

  “We’ve seen him over already.” He said to Nicola: “Might I have your name, please?”

  “Gray. Nicola Gray. I’m taking the car back.”

  “I see. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t come as far as the apron if you’d like to. Just stay with the car and don’t move until I lead you back to the perimeter road. That’s very important for safety of aircraft.”

  She smiled. “I won’t stray.”

  She got a grin back, and the police car led us through the tunnel. The far end we took a short-cut I certainly didn’t know about and found ourselves parked near a twin-engined Valetta. Looking at it, I came to the conclusion it must have been hard at it as a work-horse since the day it was built. The smoke underneath the wings made me shudder.

  Tesh was there and saw my expression. “But it’s the metal fatigue,” he said solemnly, “that has them worried. It doesn’t often catch fire so much…it’s just this tendency for the tail to come off.” Fortunately I knew that the Valetta was an exceptionally robust aircraft. Pilots’ jokes all come out of the same cracker.

  Nicola looked horrified for a second, then burst out laughing. We all felt light-hearted and probably a bit light-headed. Unscheduled flips at five-thirty a.m. can get you like that. Tesh said: “There’s a Major Wiggins from the U.S. Attaché here to speak to you. Nicola and I better wait in the car.”

  I asked: “And Flaske?”

  “Not here yet — naturally, being a professor. He’ll probably jump aboard three-quarters of the way through the take-off run. Not to worry.”

  I went over to Wiggins, who looked entirely different from what I expected from the scrambled-up voice on the phone. He was a pleasant, friendly individual; and when I matched voice to man and realized this was the person I’d felt so indignant about it made me feel a bit stupid. “Sorry I couldn’t say too much on the phone,” he said, “it may be green, but it still has wires. Where can we talk?”

  I wandered with him a little way from the car, seeing as I did so the erratic approach of an ancient Alvis Continental Tourer. Dr Flaske drove with the driver’s seat rammed hard back against the stop, so that his arms reached fo
rth dead straight as if he didn’t possess any elbows. He pulled up with a squeal of unevenly adjusted brakes and a cloud of radiator steam. Jumping out triumphantly he went over to Nicola while Wiggins burrowed in a slim briefcase for a dossier. “I won’t try and add anything to what’s here,” said Wiggins, “except to say that the department which prepared this document failed — in the opinion of the State Department — to justify its existence and has been disbanded. Herbie Brundash, though, was quite a character. Apparently he used to discuss Time and Space pretty much as if it were an address in the Catskills.” He grinned amiably. “Don’t expect any dramatic revelations. I personally don’t see the reason for the top-secret classification of the thing…but at my outfit even the menus are kept in the vaults. It’s a kind of disease.”

  With an ear-splitting croak, the starboard engine was started up, and Wiggins had to shout over it. “You know all about D.P.G.?”

  “Who’s he?” I yelled.

  He clung to his hat which was about to be torn away by the slipstream. “D.F.G. stands for ‘Delayed Photographic Background’…These documents are so top secret that the ball and chain which should be attached to them would keep that aircraft from ever leaving the ground — if it ever does. So after another two hours these sheets of paper will be pitch-black all over and even a gipsy with an X-ray-type crystal ball wouldn’t be able to read a word of it. So you just have the trip for reading them.” He produced a bit of paper for me to sign. “This certifies you have received the D.P.G. copy of the dossier from me.”

  Wiggins gazed toward the battered aircraft, watching the other propeller jerking around two revolutions before that, too, burst into life with a great black puff of oil-smoke. “I guess,” he said, “I’d better stay underneath and just blow. Just don’t blame the Wright Brothers — they never meant it this way.”

  Quite consciously I clung to memorizing this little huddled scene, that small group of ordinary human beings illuminated harshly in the violet-white light from the big steel towers.